


Mother

by ginkyou



Category: Elisabeth - Levay/Kunze
Genre: Body Worship, F/M, I'm Sorry, Incest Play, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Parent/Child Incest, Pseudo-Incest, Sexual Confusion, Shapeshifting, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, body image issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 04:48:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6501406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginkyou/pseuds/ginkyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rudolf discovers that yearning and attraction are two very similar feelings to those who never learned to differentiate between them, and Death discovers that sometimes, the quickest way into a person's heart is through their mother.</p><p>Note: Sisi herself does not actually appear in this fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother

**Author's Note:**

> _You are the queen; [...]_  
>  _And –– would it were not so! –– you are my mother._  
>  Hamlet, Act III, Scene 4
> 
> Written at 3am and unbeta'd so this is probably a bit of a mess.

Death's physical form had always been mystifying to Rudolf. He reminded Rudolf of the mirages Rudolf had seen in the Egyptian deserts. Looking over the dunes, you were convinced that in the distance you could see a ship, or a city, or a fellow group of travelers, but once you got too close the image faded into nothingness. Death's features were much the same.

The more Rudolf looked at him, the more he felt like he did not actually know what Death looked like – if anybody had asked him to describe Death years ago, back when they had not yet shared beds, he would have been able to recount the contours of his face with ease, but whenever he locked eyes with Death now, his features seemed dream-like and distant. The only thing about him that always remained the same was that he was beautiful. Death was a being of an inherently alluring yet dark and dangerous grace.

Just like Rudolf's mother.

  
  


Death held Rudolf's face with both hands. The boy was not doing very well, and Death enjoyed the way his company visibly made Rudolf feel worse. No matter how much he hurt him, the boy would always yearn for more. He would beg for his love and his care and Death gladly complied. He very much liked to feel the boy shake under his fingers, torn between wanting to draw away and huddle closer against him.

Death's touch was soft and his features kind. Rudolf relished in the gentle attention. With any other person this position would have been the prelude to a kiss, but they both knew that the time for that had not yet come. Death trailed the fingers of one hand down the side of Rudolf's face, over his cheekbone and down to his throat, the brush of his nails lighter than the touch of a feather.

  
  


“You look just like your mother,” Death said softly, more to himself to Rudolf. Rudolf flinched and swallowed involuntarily, Adam's apple bobbing against Death's fingertips. Death blinked. He had not expected any reaction, let alone one of visible vulnerability. Out of all the buttons he had found and pressed in this boy's brain, this was one had never seen before. He moved in closer, testing the water. “You're just as beautiful as your mother.” Rudolf shifted slightly, squirming under Death's touch, swallowing again and blinking. Death let him break eye contact. He knew the boy well enough to be able to monitor his every move without needing to lock eyes with him. Death moved both of his hands to open the first button on Rudolf's shirt, paying extra attention to the way Rudolf's chest expanded and contracted under his touch.

Humans and their emotions still puzzled Death sometimes. Everybody had some kind of button one could press, but some had more than others, and sometimes those buttons were hidden away in strange, dark nooks and crannies of their minds. Some of those buttons, and those minds and humans, required more careful handling than others as they were more fragile and more likely to break if touched too roughly. This boy was one of those people.

  
  


Death put his fingers under Rudolf's chin. He could feel the blood in Rudolf's vein freeze for the fraction of a second as a primal instinct in the boy was entirely convinced that he was going to go in for the final kiss. He sensed the boy's body prepare for the end under his touch, and it pleased Death greatly.

“You're beautiful,” he said, still careful, still not quite sure how far he could push this. So close to Rudolf he could see that Rudolf was trembling slightly, almost unnoticeably. The boy often did. Death had grown very fond of the sensation. “Just like your mother.” Rudolf shuddered. Death knew that if Rudolf had been anything but a trained soldier, the boy would have whimpered. Death could feel the way Rudolf's entire body was repelling against the idea of being called beautiful – the boy was convinced that he was forever just a sick, dying child, too small and soft and weak to be of any use to anyone, nothing more than an ugly duckling compared to his mother's ethereal grace or his lover's eternal elegance. It was quite amazing, even to Death, just how low this boy's self esteem could get.

Death opened his arms and Rudolf gladly accepted the invitation, burying his fingers in the back of Death's coat, breathing deep, harsh breaths into his shoulder.

  
  


Rudolf almost flung his partner off the bed when he heard his mother's voice in his ear, whispering gently: “It's okay.”

Rudolf stared at Death, eyes wide, holding him at arm's length. Death smiled at him like a cat smiled at the mouse caught in its claws, not sure yet if the mouse was to be toyed with or killed at once. Rudolf could not explain it, but the hunting instinct glimmering in Death's eyes made him flush. When Death spoke, the voice of Rudolf's mother came from his mouth, soft and kind yet clearly not spoken by his mother, a certain sharp danger resonating in the way it pronounced every syllable clearly and distinctly as if the words themselves were alien and new to the person who spoke them. “I love you,” Death said with the empress's voice.

The trembling of Rudolf's body intensified into visible shaking. He looked at Death in abject horror. It was quite visibly the first time he had heard those words uttered by that voice. Death let him stare.

Slowly, Rudolf sunk back into Death's arms, burying his face in Death's shoulder.

  
  


“Please,” Rudolf said. It seemed to take him a while to figure out what it was he wanted to ask for before he could continue. His voice was low, as if he was ashamed of asking for anything, let alone for this. “Please say that again.”

“I love you,” Rudolf's mother's voice said to him. Rudolf could hear the way the corners of the mouth that spoke those words were turned up into the mockery of a smile as they said them, but he chose to ignore it. He would not let the intent behind the words ruin them.

Death's hands glid softly over Rudolf's back, caressing him gently. Rudolf's body stiffened when he felt Death press a first kiss to his neck, his lungs seizing up at the sensation. Death felt it just as Rudolf did, and Rudolf hoped that the breath of air he felt against his skin was not a chuckle but a sigh of a pity. Then, Death's movements stopped.

  
  


“You want her,” Death said, his face still hovering over Rudolf's neck. Rudolf felt his own heart leap in his chest. He opened his mouth to deny, but he immediately knew that any attempt would have been futile. How could he lie when Death had snuck into his head and torn the truth from the winding passages of his brain. Even Death had sounded surprised, as if he had not expected this revelation.

Death did not take long to recover. His voice was soft like butter, low and dangerous, teeth shining. “You _want_ her.” Rudolf could hear his smile grow wider the longer he spoke. “Of course you do. We all do. This entire country does. It's nothing to be ashamed of.”

Death paused to gauge Rudolf's reaction, to see if there was any backpedaling to be done, if the ice under his feet was getting thinner or if he was heading in the right direction. Judging from the way Rudolf's breathing had sped up, the ice was holding. He decided to take his game one step further.

  
  


Death's posture shifted in a way that would have been unnoticeable to anyone not as accustomed to his embrace as Rudolf was. Even before Death opened his mouth, Rudolf knew that he would hear his mother's voice. “Poor child, so wrapped up in his own insecurities that even the light of the sun can't reach you anymore.” Rudolf shuddered involuntarily, part of him wanting to tear himself from Death's arms, flee the room and never come back, part of him wanting nothing more than to drink in every last drop of that voice.

Rudolf's eyes fluttered open as he felt fingers open another button on his shirt, but he shut them the second he saw that it were Death's hands doing the deed. As long as he kept his eyes closed, the spell would not be broken. Death pressed his hands onto his chest softly and Rudolf let himself glide back onto his bed as Death opened his shirt.

  
  


“You desire her,” Death finally said, his voice back to normal, as if he had only now truly realized the impact of that conclusion. He sounded like he had caught a particularly strange butterfly and was studying it under his magnifying glass, trying to figure out which species it belonged to, puzzled by its unusual shape and colors. The idea itself made sense to him, the empress was after all the most beautiful woman in Rudolf's world, always just out of sight and therefore readily idealized, held high on a pedestal by everyone he knew, yearned for by many yet seen by few and understood by none, the one constant in his life. She was a beautiful enigma, always just gone or not yet arrived, and it was no wonder the boy had fallen for her. Rudolf never had much of a chance to develop a familial attachment to her, so his yearning for her expressed itself in the only other way he had learned to. Death was surprised at himself for never having considered what now seemed so obvious.

  
  


“I understand you,” Death said, once more speaking with the empress's voice. “You were never meant to live this life, just like me.” To Rudolf, even the Death's hands felt different as he was speaking with his mother's voice, the touch of his fingers softer and warmer than before. Rudolf still feared that if he opened his eyes he would destroy the illusion, even though he wasn't sure if it actually was just an illusion. “We were both caught like birds in a cage, flying free in one moment and trapped in the next.”

A part of Rudolf's heart hurt at the words, not just because they were true, but because his mother never would have said any of them, not to him or to anyone else. It was a mockery of all his mother stood for, all she was as a person, but he shoved that feeling aside as roughly as he could and focused all of his attention on the voice and touch and caress. He was a point where he would have accepted the poorest imitation of her if it meant that he could pretend to relish in her attention for even a second.

  
  


“You were so lonely,” the voice said, gentler than anything he had ever heard before. Rudolf felt like the words had struck him right into the heart. He put his arm over his face and mouthed a broken noise of agreement into the loose sleeve, hand balled into a fist. “You want me. You need me,” Death said, and Rudolf could not tell if he was still speaking with his mother's voice.

“Yes,” Rudolf choked, hand covering his face in shame and fear and anger at his own weakness, tears dripping out from between his fingers, “yes, I do, I do.” Death gently pulled him up, and when Rudolf opened his eyes, still burning with tears, his mother was sitting before him. Her naked body was pale and radiant, her hair spread out behind her, her eyes big and brown like those of a doe. Rudolf felt incredibly, incomprehensibly inferior to her. She was a goddess, perfect in every way, and he was nothing. But she was holding out her arms and even though he did not want to defile her fae-like grace with his lowly mortal fingers he gladly and thankfully embraced her. She was everything he had ever wanted, and he accepted her love without question.

  
  


It was just a charade. He could feel it in the way she breathed and moved and caressed his skin. He could see Death so clearly in the way she smiled at him and the way her fingers lingered on his face, but he did not let it bother him. He let his mother-lover touch him and kiss him and undress him. He let her explore his body, and he explored hers, revering it like one might worship the dead body of a saint. She opened her legs for him and he let himself do what men do to the women they desire, and every time she whispered into his ear that she loved him his heart fluttered in his chest and his lungs seized up and he gripped her a little tighter. She knew his rhythm by heart because Death knew it just as well. In the heat of the moment he buried her teeth in her shoulder until he could taste her blood, he could not help it, he had to break the spell of her beauty somehow and if breaking her skin was the only way to do so then so be it.

They came at almost the same time, Rudolf burying his fingernails in his mother's skin, because Death would not let any miscalculation on that part ruin the magic. Rudolf clung onto his mother for long minutes after their movement had ceased, desperately breathing in her scent and drinking in her warmth because he knew that this encounter would be over as soon as he let go, the Fata Morgana would disappear because he had gotten too close, he had touched its water and the second he had done so it had evaporated.

  
  


“I need you,” Rudolf said.

“I know.” It was Death's voice that replied. Rudolf gripped the body that was pretending to be his mother's more closely at the sound, straining against her, his lungs burning with the pure need to tell her, no, _him_ that that was not what he meant, that was not _who_ he meant, but he knew that it would have been in vain. He knew that he had no choice but to let go. The moment had passed. It was time to let go.

Rudolf let his fake mother crawl out his arms, her movements now fully betraying who she really was underneath that intoxicatingly beautiful costume. He did not want to tear his eyes from her ethereal form as she stood up, but he knew that they would not be able to pretend forever. He looked down at himself, feeling strange and defeated and empty inside, and when he looked up again and saw Death standing in his mother's place, he wished he had never given in to his seductions.

Something about the way Death gently touched his cheek, his fingers softly lingering over the tight muscles of his clenched jaw, told Rudolf that this encounter should have made him feel good about himself, but it did not.

Somehow, Rudolf felt even more broken than before.


End file.
